Relentless Hope
Campbell Dye
November 13, 2022
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Isaiah 65: 17-25 (NIVUK)
17 ‘See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice for ever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.20 ‘Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
23 They will not labour in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,’
says the Lord.
We visited Niagara Falls this summer. We approached from the American side and walked down the banks of the Niagara River. Hundreds of yards from the falls, the water is already boiling and surging, galloping over rocks and rushing under bridges. The sheer force of the water gushing over the lip of the falls is breath-taking. The noise and spray make it thrilling and terrifying to watch. There is a relentlessness like nothing you have seen before. Nothing is stopping that water. Ceaseless, it eats at the solid rock and crashes on towards Lake Ontario.
The concept of hope in the Bible is relentless, like those falls. It flows through Old and New Testaments, ever present despite the bleakness of some of the stories we read. Here, and in Revelation (that weird, powerful and complicated end-point of scripture), we find one of its clearest and most comforting expressions.
In language which is as timeless as it is beautiful, we are reassured that God plans a time when “the former things will not be remembered” and “the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard... no more”.
These are words we need to hear, and they are words we need to hold onto. Each of us has our own “weeping” and “crying” we would love to be wiped away. Each of us knows “former things” we want to be free of. But is all this no more than a platitude? Our experience of life often tells us that we should expect more suffering, not less.
God keeps his promises. In His word to us, hope is not an afterthought. It is essential to what He has to say. We have already seen God deliver on his promise of Hope. Jesus’ death and resurrection show us that our hope is real. We are forgiven and set free by that truth.
PRAYER:
Father God, help us to hold tight to the hope you have given us. Thank you that Jesus has put us right with you. May we live well in that truth. AMEN.
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